Comment

On Nov. 8th, two days after the American elections, and without consulting Congress or the American people, President Bush announced that he was nearly doubling the American force in the Gulf and would, in effect, rely on the threat of military attack, rather than on sanctions, to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Mr. Bush by taking this step made it clear that the post-Cold War world would be a familiar place. By acting precipitately and making use of the UN & its own allies largely as political cover, the Bush administration elevated a serious but local conflict in the Persian Gulf into a supreme challenge to its own credibility... "If we don't check this aggression," President Bush explained last month, "a chance for lasting peace and for stability and security in the Gulf and a new world order will have been...foregone. It's that big. It's that important. Nothing like this since World War II. Nothing of this moral importance since World War II. "The President has provided few details of what his "new world order" might look like, however, or how it might work... To a reluctant, uncertain American people the President has made a soothing promise. "This will not be another Vietnam," he said at the end of November. "We will not permit our troops to have their hands tied behind their backs."